Ayrshire Hospice

The Ayrshire Hospice provides outstanding quality care and services which helps those with any life-limiting illness. Care is provided where there is no cure for the condition, but which improves the quality of each day for people who have a limited time to live.

Our charity helps adults throughout Ayrshire and Arran with life-limiting illness such as cancer, neurological conditions, end stage heart failure and lung disease. We help people to live as actively as they can to the end of their lives - however long that may be, where ever that may be.

The care we provide not only seeks to alleviate pain and symptoms, but also allows people to stay engaged with friends, family and their community. We not only look after people’s physical needs but also attend to their emotional, spiritual and social needs too. We provide care in a number of places, including people’s own homes, hospitals and care homes as well as in our purpose built day care and in-patient units. Wherever suits our patients best. Family members, close friends and carers are also supported both during a person’s illness and following bereavement.

The care provided by the Ayrshire Hospice is at no cost to the patient. However, it does require extensive, on-going fundraising support. Last year it cost almost £7.6million to run all hospice services, including clinical, fundraising and support services – equating to almost £21,000 per day. Over £4.6 million was raised through voluntary donations alone.

During the last year we had 1,400 referrals. The majority of our care was provided in the community with just over 3,500 visits being made to patients by our team of community specialist palliative care nurses. Over 173 referrals were made to our day service Solas, allowing patients to visit the hospice for the day and giving them access to a range of services including therapy and interest groups, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, our drop in café, carers café and respite care.

180 permanent employed staff and 628 volunteers work closely together to provide outstanding hospice care across Ayrshire. Our amazing volunteers gave a phenomenal 130,718 hours of their time during the last year.